


til the morning light

by impossibletruths



Series: until the dawn [6]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Prompt Fill, heavy on the comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 19:39:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17834885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: She is shaking apart at the seams, but that is not a collapse she must weather alone.





	til the morning light

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt _taking a bath together_. this is… not quite that, but close enough. set some indistinct time late game. tw panic attacks. title from "stay alive" by jose gonzalez.
> 
> originally posted to [tumblr](https://cityandking.tumblr.com/post/171715229327/til-the-morning-light)

The nightmare is half dream and half memory, and it drags her from sleep in the small hours of the morning with a muffled gasp. He sleeps soundly on his side of the bed, one arm thrown out, and she slips out from beneath the blankets as quietly as she can, anxious not to wake him. Her feet are silent as she crosses the room to the bathing chamber, and she closes the door behind her before lighting any of the candles.

She runs the bath with trembling hands, fingers curled around the lip of the tub as the the water splashes into the basin. The droplets cling to her cold fingers and it takes a moment too long to remember the runes for warmth, those old glyphs even the youngest apprentice learned to keep their quarters warm, hedge magics passed from mage to mage and yet to be found in any tome in any library. (Expressly forbidden, of course, but their rebellions started quietly a long time ago.)

Her fingers fumble through the lines of the symbols, and it takes her two tries too many to draw them against the porcelain tub, but finally the magic catches and the water begins to steam as it rises. She presses one hand flat against the side, heat seeping into her palm until it nearly burns. She presses her forehead to the lip and breathes as best she can, lets the running water run like static through her mind. 

It does little to wash her nightmare away.

It takes a few long minutes, and she does her best to steady her heartbeat and her breathing as she waits for the tub to fill. When finally she sheds her shirt and smalls and steps into the water the heat digs into the knotted muscles of her back, her shoulders, her neck, and she unfurls, flowerlike, tension bleeding away into the water.

(Her hands do not stop shaking.)

She tips her head back, stares at the dimness of the ceiling of the room, lets her hands drift palms up at her sides. The steam rises like a cloud from the water, and it would be too hot were it not for the fire beneath her skin. She breathes it in, holds it deep in her lungs a moment and then blows it out again, slowly and steady. Her eyes drift shut.

Against the dark of her eyelids, she sees the village burn again.

She sits up in a rush, water splashing over the side of the tub, hands clenching tight into fists. Legs drawn up, she presses her forehead to the heat-reddened skin of her knees, arms wrapped tight around them, and the fragile conrol she has been holding delicately in her chest since they arrived back at Skyhold cracks, falls to pieces like broken pottery, and she cannot swallow back the sobs.

They burned. They burned and she’d done nothing, and it had been Haven all over again, the roiling heat of the flames and Adan screaming, and––

Maker above. She doesn’t want this. She doesn’t want any of this. She wants to go  _home_. She––

“Vesper?”

Her shoulders tighten, hunching tighter over her knees, and it is stupid it is ridiculous but she cannot stop crying and she doesn’t want him to see; she is better than this she is stronger she is the Inquisitor she is––

He is there, suddenly, crouching at the tub; she can see the shape of him out of the corner of her eye, hovering, hands placed carefully at the rim, and he says,

“Vesper? What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry,” she coughs out, chest tight. “I’m sorry I didn’t–– I didn’t––”

Didn’t mean to wake him didn’t mean to shatter didn’t mean to fail didn’t mean to end up here at all didn’t mean for any of this at all, she didn’t she didn’t she––

His hand is cool against her shoulder, and gentle, as though afraid she will pull away, but he is like an anchor; she leans into him without thought, braces herself against him, and his touch grows firm.

“It’s alright,” he says. “It’s alright.”

She gasps, “I’m sorry.”

“Look at me. Vesper, love, look at me.”

He coaxes her gaze to him, and his hair is a mess and the collar of his shirt askew, but his eyes are clear, and guileless, and warm. That is the worst of it, that clear, quiet gaze.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him quiet, suffocating, all the air gone from her lungs, and her chest aches with the emptiness. He lays his other hand against her cheek, brushes the tears away, and she leans into him, into his steadiness, into his strength.

“It’s alright,” he says gently. “You’re alright.”

“Cullen.”

“I’m here.”

“Hold me,” she asks, and he does without question, leaning over to wrap his arms around her, and she reaches up too, trembling still. Water spills across the floor but she barely notices as he lifts her up, dripping wet, still-warm bathwater seeping into his shirt and breeches. His embrace is tight, so tight, and she clings to him just as fiercely in turn. Out of the bath the air is cold, but he is warm and solid and he murmurs quietly as he holds her aloft, and she focuses on nothing but the bulk of him and her own unsteady breathes.

Something as simple as breathing should not be so hard.

“It’s alright,” he murmurs the whole while, his voice rumbling through her, down into her very bones. “I have you, it’s alright.”

She clings to him like a ship at port in a storm, and gasps for air, and shakes.

Finally, finally the trembling subsides, and she is follow and heavy all at once. She slips from his arms, halfway to shame, but he only rests one hand on the back of her neck and presses his forehead against hers. She breathes shakily and rests her hand against the damp front of his shirt, his heart beating evenly beneath her palm.

“Come back to bed?” he murmurs, and she pulls away from him just enough to nod. He smiles a little, scar pulling crooked at his mouth, and in that moment she loves him.

They curl together among the mess of blankets, heat long-since evaporated, but the bedsheets are soft and dry, and the fire crackles quietly in the hearth, and her exhaustion leaves her limbs and eyelids weighed down, and between the dancing of the fire and the steady rhythm of his breathing it is no time at all before she slips into sleep.

This time, it is dreamless.


End file.
